Inside the minds of Roy Keane

He is football's most complex and compelling figure. Now, in an astonishingly honest interview, he tells all to Sean O'Hagan. By turns fearsome, feckless and funny, Keane talks about that tackle, his drinking and loneliness and says - for the first time - that he is ready to make peace with his Irish team-mates

Inside the minds of Roy Keane

He is football's most complex and compelling figure. Now, in an astonishingly honest interview, he tells all to Sean O'Hagan. By turns fearsome, feckless and funny, Keane talks about that tackle, his drinking and loneliness and says - for the first time - that he is ready to make peace with his Irish team-mates

Sunday 1 September 2002 06.33 EDT
First published on Sunday 1 September 2002 06.33 EDT

I initially fail to notice Roy Keane in the reception of the Marriott Four Seasons hotel in Hale, Manchester, where we have arranged to meet. When I ask where he is, the receptionist points over my shoulder to the most infamous footballer in the land, who is standing barely a few feet behind me, chatting amiably to a member of staff. In grey sports top, track suit bottoms and trainers, Keane possesses none of the imposing presence that he exudes on the pitch. In fact, he looks almost nondescript: smaller, wirier and a whole lot younger looking than his photographs suggest.

There is something callow, almost boyish about him, that same well-scrubbed, trim appearance that young Jesuits used to have, back when the priesthood, rather than professional football, was the career of choice for young Irish men of a vocational bent. After introductions are made, he seems both eager to please and utterly relaxed, but almost immediately there is a hitch: he assumes that The Observer has booked a room for the interview - we are under the mistaken impression that his agent has done the honours. For a brief moment it crosses my mind that this is exactly the sort of thing that, as recent events have shown, could send football's reigning perfectionist charging off home in a strop, effing and blinding, and vowing never to be interviewed by amateurs again. Instead, he calmly takes charge, charming the receptionist into finding us a corner of an empty lounge. All the while, he is talkative and good humoured, evincing none of the intensity nor impatience that defines the tortured individual who emerges, seething and raging, from between then lines of his book, Keane, the Autobiography. Glimpses of that other Roy Keane, though, will emerge later.

Even by the unreal standards of modern footballing celebrity, he has had a turbulent few months. For more than a decade he has been acknowledged as one of the best players in British football, but for most of that time others have hogged the headlines while he has simply accumulated winners' medals and acclaim. Now, though, he is not just the best player in the league, but the most controversial, supplanting even his team-mate David Beckham as the centre of attention. This transformation began in May, on the eve of the World Cup finals, when Keane's long and simmering feud with the Irish footballing establishment in general, and the manager of its national team Mick McCarthy in particular, exploded amid spectacular acrimony and Keane, Ireland's captain and greatest player, was sent home without kicking a ball.

That drama merely whetted the public's appetite for Keane's autobiography which, given his reputation for frankness and recklessness, was already the most eagerly awaited football book for years. His choice of Eamon Dunphy as ghost writer, a man who has carved out a career in Ireland as professional begrudger, was always going to up the ante.

The book, of course, is the reason we are here. I had spent the previous afternoon in an inner sanctum of Penguin publishers, reading the manuscript. The last two chapters, which give his version of the World Cup walk-out, were handed to me fresh from the lawyers at the close of day. Given all that has happened in the four weeks since, not least the decision by Alf Inge Haaland and his club, Manchester City, to instigate possible legal proceedings against Keane and Manchester United over a vicious lunge on the Norwegian - described with brutal relish in the book - Penguin's guarded approach has proved well-founded. Since extracts were published a few weeks ago, Keane has found himself once again at the centre of a storm of negative publicity, which, from the outside at least, seems to swirl around his aloof head like so much hot air.

He has been psychoanalysed, censured and castigated in print by journalists, ex-players, and professional pundits alike, whose rush to judge him has often resulted in shallow and lazy conclusions. Only Alex Ferguson, his club manager and mentor, has stood resolutely by him, despite the fact that the book is critical of many Manchester United players, their corporate supporters, and the board of directors. Keane is nothing if not consistent - everyone who does not come up to his exacting standards of behaviour and commitment gets a kicking in print.

And he is exactly the same in person. In conversation, Keane cuts an amiable and accommodating figure but, as with the book, it is the mixture of frankness, unexpected humour and utter disregard for the feelings or reactions of others that make him so compelling. In the next two hours some of the biggest names in football are given short shrift. Jack Charlton, for instance, the manager who transformed Ireland's fortunes as an international side, is admired for his footballing achievements but defined by his miserliness: 'If Jack came in here now, he wouldn't buy you a drink, he'd be hoping somebody would buy him one. He's a miser. A miser. That's all he spoke about... money.'

Charlton's sidekick Maurice Setters ('a yes man, a bluffer') fares much worse. In football such candour is anathema. For a start, most footballers want to be liked by their peers (Keane doesn't appear to care), but even where there are private frictions a facade of camaraderie is maintained in public. With Keane there is no pretence. Peter Schmeichel was a great goalkeeper, but 'as a person, not my cup of tea', while the England striker Teddy Sheringham was 'another bluffer. It's all about, me me me'. Eric Cantona, on the other hand, inspires genuine admiration, both as a footballer and as a man.

The irony is that until the book, Keane rarely courted publicity and was famed for valuing his privacy. So why do it in the first place?

'Penguin gave a good offer,' he says, laughing. 'But I suppose I just wanted it to be rawer than the usual football book.' In that, he has undoubtedly succeeded. It is also more honest, often laying bare his own faults as mercilessly as those of his team-mates and his perceived enemies.

'Well, there's no point in doing a book where you're just patting yourself on the back. A lot's gone on in my career, ups and downs, and I think this is a chance to say, "Look, I am human. I have made mistakes". There's nobody more aware of that than myself. I have this image - the robot, the madman, the winner, and obviously I've brought a lot of it on myself over the years - the sending-offs, the off-the-field stuff. I'm getting older, and this was an opportunity to put my side of the story.'

One of the mistakes that many in football - and beyond perhaps - would like Keane to own up to, is the challenge made on Haaland, a Norwegian journeyman whose not particularly accomplished career in British football is now defined by two bruising encounters with Keane. The first took place in the autumn of 1997 when Haaland was playing for Leeds. In the book, Keane writes, 'He was winding me up from the beginning of the game... five minutes from time... I lunged forward at Haaland. I was trying to trip him rather than kick him. I knew it would probably mean a booking but, fuck it, he'd done my head in.'

As a result of that misguided lunge, the cruciate ligament in Keane's knee snapped. Keane was out for nearly a year, but what incensed him was Haaland's immediate reaction - he stood over Keane and accused him of faking injury.

Three and a half years later Keane had his revenge. Haaland was by now playing for Manchester City, and towards the end of a full-blooded game with United Keane launched a vicious, thigh-high assault that left Haaland writhing on the ground and Keane receiving another red card. Haaland has not started a game since, though it is by no means clear whether this is because of an injury caused by Keane.

What about Haaland, I ask.

'What about him?' he mutters.

In the book, Keane says: 'I'd waited long enough. I fucking hit him hard. The ball was there (I think). Take that you cunt. And don't ever stand over me sneering about fake injuries.'

You definitely went after him, I say. You were carrying that for a long time...

He nods. 'Maybe so. Maybe so.'

Were you annoyed at yourself for being sent off again? There is maybe a three-second pause.

'Nah.'

Was it worth it, then?

'Not for two weeks' wages, no,' he laughs. Then, in a flash, he is suddenly serious. 'I was just saying to one of the younger players, Michael Stewart it was, that I never went after a player to injure him in my life. Even Haaland.'

I think back to the oft-repeated footage of that truly shocking moment. What exactly were you intending to do, then?

'Let him know that I remembered.'

So, you don't regret it?

'No. Even in the dressing room afterwards, I had no remorse. My attitude was, fuck him. What goes around comes around. He got his just rewards. He fucked me over and my attitude is an eye for an eye.'

Truthfully, you believe that?

'I know it's not right, don't get me wrong. I wouldn't try and tell my kid that. But I'm only human, I was out for a long year that time.'

A few weeks later, after the serialisation of the book has made his revelations about the Haaland tackle a national issue, Keane comes back to OSM concerned about what he has said to me, and eager to clarify his views. Haaland and Manchester City have already instigated legal proceedings, and a charge from the Football Association appears inevitable.

'I have never in my career set out to deliberately injure any player,' he says. 'In the incident involving Haaland I was making a genuine effort to play the ball. The words used in the book represent a degree of artistic licence on the part of the author. It should be borne in mind that Haaland has acknowledged that my tackle did not bring his career to a premature end.'

What is revealing about what he said to me though, apart from his brutal honesty, is why Keane holds Haaland responsible in the first place. The injury that laid him up for so long, and caused him to wreak revenge was self-inflicted, a result of that desperate lunge.

By now it is clear that though in person Keane is affable and in many ways charming, the intensity that fires him, both on and off the pitch, is always tangible. At times, he seems determined to undercut the abiding image of himself as a dour and dogged outsider; at others, he seems powerless to control his tongue, never mind his simmering sense of injustice. It is this imbalance, of course, that makes Roy Keane the most fascinating footballer of his time, part existential anti-hero, part unreconstituted hard man.

The first episode with Haaland came during a particularly turbulent period of Keane's life, when frequent drinking binges were also landing him in the headlines. Two days before the Leeds game he had a fight in the Chester Street Hotel with some Irish supporters from Dublin who were slagging off his beloved Cork. As he was escorted from the hotel, one wag shouted from an upstairs window: 'Keane, you Cork bastard, you'll be in the tabloids tomorrow'. Looking back, he now feels at least partly to blame for the extent of his injury. 'My night of drinking,' Keane writes, 'had taken its toll.'

The book makes clear that for a long period drinking was a central part of his life. His early days at Nottingham Forest under Brian Clough were a mixture of discipline and alcohol-fuelled anarchy. 'It was,' he says, 'a different game then.' From today's perspective, it looks like a different planet.

Back then Keane would leave Nottingham for Cork directly after Saturday's game, arriving there in time 'for last orders at the Temple Acre, then a meal with my mates. Saturday was dancing, drinking, kebabs... Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, same routine.' That cavalier lifestyle seems scarcely credible now in a game directed by nutritionists and motivation coaches as well as trainers and physios.

'I know,' he says, shaking his head at the absurdity of that not-too-distant time, 'but that was the norm back then. We used to get wrecked.'

Given that Cork can be a hard town, did he ever consider the very real possibility that one drunken ruck could have put him out of action for the season? 'Oh, I know. Without a doubt. In town, there'd always be one or two fellas looking for trouble, but I'd always have my four or five mates and we'd be ready.'

So, you would be up for a fight if it happened?

'Oh aye. The amount of fights I've had in Cork that I haven't even mentioned. That,' he says, laughing, 'would probably be another book. I mean, people go on about my problems off the field, but they don't even know the half of it. My uncles used to say to me, "Why don't you go and have a drink in a hotel - Jury's or the Metropole, nice hotels like that?" But, I would say, "No. No. I don't want to drink in a hotel. I don't want to sit in a hotel with the shirts and ties when I'm 20. I'd rather take me chances in the bars in Cork".'

For a moment, he seems quite proud of his youthful ability to court trouble but stay one step ahead of it. Then, almost wistfully, he adds: 'See, back then, when I went home, it was like I was never away, you know? In a way, the fight at the end of the night was the price I was prepared to pay to go home, go out with my mates and let off a bit of steam. That kind of stuff didn't make the papers until I started getting bigger. I wouldn't dream of doing it now, but it was great then.'

From the start, though, Keane's fondness for the drink proved problematic. After Forest lost the 1991 FA Cup Final to Spurs, the 19-year-old defender, who had played despite a bad ankle injury, went on the rip for six weeks. He returned to the club a stone overweight. When he joined United the drinking continued apace. In the book, he writes that 'the discovery that there was a serious drinking sub-culture at United was delightfully reassuring'.

Leaving aside the unlikelihood of Roy Keane ever uttering the words 'delightfully reassuring', I ask him how on earth top players got away with it back then?

'I tell you how,' he replies, having obviously given this some thought, 'Back then, 10 or 11 of you would go out. So, you'd all be in the same boat if you were caught. Now, you'd be on your own. We're going back 10 years here, to Robbo, Brucie, [Bryan Robson and Steve Bruce] big drinkers. Look, if players say they're going out for a meal now, they actually are. Back then, when we went out for a so-called meal, you wouldn't even see a sandwich.'

Early on, his drinking was linked to loneliness and an inability to fit in socially with his fellow players. I read him back one of his book's most honest passages. 'I found it very difficult to cope with the kind of fame that accompanied my status as a footballer. I wanted to be alone. Well, not as alone as I found myself during the early months in Manchester... Stupidity and pride meant that I would never dream of making the first move to initiate a friendship.'

He nods. 'Yeah, yeah. I had to be honest about that. When I first used to live here, I was my own worst enemy. My pride stopped me saying, "I wouldn't mind going for a meal with one of yous".'

For those of us who have watched him for the past decade or so, this is surely the irony that reveals the complexity of Keane's character: a committed and confident warrior on the field, a shy, socially awkward, and often lonely introvert off it. That, I suggest, is an interesting mix.

'It's been a hard mix,' he replies, falling silent for a long moment. 'Off the pitch, I have this "leave me alone" sort of attitude. I'm working on it, though. As you get older, you mellow. Or, you see things differently. See, back then, I'd be out with the lads and I'd feel part of it all for a while, and then other times, I'd feel like I was somehow a bit different, but not in a nasty way. Removed.'

So you drank to fit in?

'I don't know.' He pauses. 'I don't know if I'd go that far. The thing is, I'd be out in the afternoon because I'd need a few drinks to relax before I met up with the lads at five. Which is crazy. Lads I play with every day, train with every day, and I'd be "I'm meeting the lads tonight, I'd better have a few before I meet them". Madness.'

Because you felt shy or awkward?

'Yeah. Maybe so.' He laughs, slightly embarrassed. 'See it was a vicious circle for me. I'd keep to myself, then I'd meet the lads and I'd be ready for a bit of action. I kind of go berserk, if you know what I mean. The trouble might come, and I'd be full of remorse, feeling bad. It'd be, "Oh Jesus, I'm not going out ever again". And then I'd keep to myself for weeks.'

The long lay-off caused by his cruciate injury was a bleak time for a man whose life, as he suddenly realised, was defined to an extraordinary degree by those regular 90-minute bouts of combat on the pitch. He admits to feeling lost and frustrated without the purpose and the adrenalin of football. His drinking escalated. He had a row with a barman at a United reserve team party; another with his manager after he was subsequently banned from attending the first team party. His response was to go out on a drinking spree on his own.

'The injury,' he says now, 'was an eye opener. It was a big blow for me. I was only 27, 28. I'm not saying I ever took things for granted, but I had started to relax a little, and enjoy things. I was thinking, this is what it's all about, then, suddenly it seemed like it might all be over.'

Was it that serious?

'Oh yeah. Especially the way I was carrying on. I was out on the piss every night.'

On crutches?

'Oh yeah,' he laughs. 'Ridiculous. Totally ridiculous. I was doing a lot of stuff I shouldn't have been doing - not just dancing but daft stuff like jumping over hedges and cars. I'd sometimes come in the next day and I couldn't move for my knee.'

Keane denies that he checked into The Priory, the rehab clinic of choice for the rich and famous, for alcohol-related depression in the summer of 2000. He says he has a letter from the staff there that backs him up. He also denies attending meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous at around the same time in a Quaker hall near his home in Sale, Cheshire. His decision to wise up, stop drinking, and get down to the serious and dogged business of recovery came when he spent some long evenings sitting alone in the old Manchester United training ground while his team mates went through their paces.

'I'd watch the lads finish training,' he recalls, 'and they'd shoot off out of there like the building was on fire, like they couldn't get away quick enough. I said to myself, "If I do get back there, I'm going to work on the things I need to work on".' Now, he says, he often has to be 'dragged away' from United's new all-purpose training centre. 'I'll get it all back later in my career. It's no good doing this stuff when I'm 33 or 34, and it's too late.'

Does he think about the moment when he will have to give the game up?

'I'm dreading it. Dennis [Irwin] left a few weeks ago, and it's going to happen to me. I want to hang in there as long as I can.'

Is he preparing for it in any way?

'A little bit. Now that I'm not playing international games, I'll have a bit more time to maybe do my coaching badges. I'll hopefully go down that route, but you talk to other coaches and they tell you that the playing is what it's all about. The playing is the ultimate thing. There's no way to replace that, and I'm dreading it. I'll miss the buzz, big style.'

I ask if the injury, and its protracted aftermath, was the low point of his tempestuous career. He shakes his head. 'No. The sending-offs were. For sure.'

Hardly surprisingly Keane's supremely aggressive style has brought him more than his fair share of red cards - 10 in all. More surprising is how he feels about them. 'People think, "ah well, it's Roy Keane", but they really do affect me. They really do.'

Particularly the last one, nearly a year ago at Newcastle. Then the former England international Alan Shearer wound Keane up, and he took the bait.

Keane's disgust with himself was such that Ferguson had to talk him out of retiring from the game. Is it simply a case of the red mist descending, and all reason disappearing?

'Yeah. It's like I'm standing over there looking at myself.' He considers this for a moment or two, trying to pinpoint the cause. 'The thing is, we were going to lose that game, and I couldn't accept it. It's like at school, or at Rockmount [his club in Cork], I couldn't accept losing. The trainers would be going, "Relax, Roy," but no, that's not me. Mad, I know, but I'm working on it.'

Keane says his binge drinking came to an end three years ago when he spent a night in the cells after another brawl in a city centre club. The incident had all the trademarks of a tabloid set-up - it actually made the Sun the following morning - but it meant that Alex Ferguson was summoned to a Manchester police station in the early hours, just four days before the FA Cup Final, and ten days before the European Cup Final. 'There was a pattern here,' Keane concludes in the book, 'the story of me, drink and cities: Cork, Dublin, Nottingham, Manchester. It adds up to aggravation.'

Was that night in the cells the turning point?

'Maybe, yeah. It was obviously getting me in trouble. I mean, without drink, that whole thing would not have gone beyond first base. I wouldn't have been there to begin with. Or, I would have walked away. It really pissed me off, the gaffer having to come and get me, and all. That was a long night, that was a hell of a long night.'

Did Ferguson give you a bollocking?

'Not that time. He could see that I was angry with myself. Not looking for sympathy or anything, but genuinely disgusted with myself. He just asked if I was okay. His reading of the situation is always spot on.'

And has he knocked his drinking on the head now?

'Aye. I've not had a drink for a while. It was affecting my knee. I spoke to the medical people at United. Especially when it was contract time, the talks, you know, I knew they'd be checking on my knee.'

His concern and canniness paid off when Keane recently signed a new contract, reported to be worth more than £4m a year. He has no qualms over the club's concern about his knee.

'It's the most natural thing in the world for the club to check about my knee. The medical people said there was a problem with me going out. And there was, I knew alcohol affected it. I'd come in the next day and I couldn't move for my knee. I was doing stuff I shouldn't have been doing. Not necessarily dancing, jumping over daft hedges and cars and that. But even standing at the bar for four or five hours is not going to help your knee. It's a selfish thing with me. If I look after myself, I'll be in the game longer, I'll get more money out of it.'